Drawing A Complete Blank On New Gun Law Proposals

June 24, 1999|By Cathy Young. Cathy Young is the author of "CEASEFIRE!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality."

In the wake of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, gun control is on the front burner again. A tough gun bill was passed by the Senate last month, then watered down in the House and killed by gun-control proponents who found the amended version too weak. In upcoming congressional races and in the presidential campaign, Democrats are likely to make a major issue out of the National Rifle Association's influence over the GOP (Vice President Al Gore has already fired the first volleys), while Republicans are likely to appeal to gun owners concerned that their rights will be trampled.

One could endlessly debate the pros and cons of specific gun laws.

But beyond that, what's truly fascinating, and in some ways truly disturbing, is the cultural divide on guns. To a lot of educated people, and not just leftists, supporting the right to own a gun--let alone owning one!--is not just wrong but utterly alien. It's a mark of low-class barbarism, sort of like enjoying pro wrestling or reading supermarket tabloids. In a discussion in the on-line magazine Slate, New York journalist Phil Weiss casually notes, "We all decry the 2nd Amendment . . ." In his circle, no doubt, they all do.

This may explain why, when it comes to guns, many liberals depart from their usual principles. One provision in the Senate gun bill would have barred anyone convicted of a violent felony as a juvenile from ever buying a gun. What happened to the liberal view of crime and rehabilitation? What about someone who fell in with a bad crowd and got involved in a robbery at the age of 15 but has led an exemplary life for 30 years, and who wants to start a business in a neighborhood where he'll need a gun for protection?

Because of this knee-jerk attitude, it's difficult for many people, including journalists, to give a fair hearing to pro-gun arguments--such as the case for guns as a crime prevention measure.

As usual, the claims of both sides deserve skepticism. Gun advocates assert that 2.5 million crimes a year are stopped by pistol-packing victims, usually without a single shot fired. But the Washington-based Statistical Assessment Service reports that estimates of the frequency of defensive gun use vary widely. U.S. Justice Department surveys show only 80,000 incidents a year--though it stands to reason that many people, particularly those whose guns are illegally owned and unregistered, would be hesitant to mention in a government survey that they used a gun in self-defense. The median figure from all surveys is 764,000.

The probably exaggerated pro-gun claim, however, has gotten far less publicity than the conclusion of a 1986 study that "a gun owner is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder." As STATS points out, 85 percent of the deaths recorded as family murders in that study were actually suicides. (One could argue that gun ownership is responsible for many impulse suicides, by providing a handy and efficient means of self-destruction in a moment of despair; yet it is worth noting that we have suicide rates far lower than in many European countries where guns are rare, such as Sweden and Finland.)

Most journalists' visceral aversion to guns undoubtedly accounts for the extreme reluctance to report some inconvenient facts. For instance, in the high school shootings in Pearl, Miss., and in Edinboro, Pa., armed civilians--Assistant Principal Joel Myrick and restaurant owner James Strand, respectively--disarmed the shooters at gunpoint and stopped the shooting rampages before the police arrived, probably saving many lives. The few news stories that gave them credit usually omitted their use of firearms, instead saying simply that they "subdued" the attackers or "persuaded" them to surrender (what, by using the power of positive thinking?).

One could say, of course, that if it hadn't been for guns, the heroics of Strand and Myrick would not have been needed. Yet it is equally plausible that, given the millions of guns already in private hands and this country's poor record of controlling illegal substances, no gun law--not even a ban on all private ownership of handguns--would have necessarily prevented high-school shootings.

The intelligentsia also continues to treat it as self-evident that widespread availability of guns leads to high rates of crime and homicide, invoking European countries with strict gun laws by comparison. Almost never mentioned is the fact that in 1990, the non-firearm-related murder rate in the U.S. was at least three times higher than the total murder rates in Japan, Sweden or Switzerland. In Switzerland, by the way, guns are legal.

This is another fact persistently ignored in most media coverage of the gun debate. Switzerland has a thriving gun culture--plenty of gun shops and shooting ranges, shooting contests for children, laws requiring all men between the ages of 20 and 42 to own a pistol or a rifle--and virtually no crime.

The debate over guns and gun rights involves many complex and painful questions. But it should be a real debate. Instead, many gun-control advocates act as if there were no legitimate arguments for the right to bear arms, and as if anyone who favors that right were in favor of little kids getting shot at school. This issue, like any other, deserves to be approached with an open mind.